


Magic For All

by TracedInAir



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: Diweekly, Diweekly Prompt, Drama, Dystopia, F/F, Heist, Kinda, me: I promise I won't get too political, me: writes this fic, ngl it was really hard to do this worldbuilding in 3000 words hope it worked, sorta - Freeform, spies au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:20:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25992013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TracedInAir/pseuds/TracedInAir
Summary: “Tell me, Akko,” Diana's voice came out quietly, despite the mere inches separating them, “was it ever real?”For centuries, the noblewitches have ruled with an iron fist, jealously guarding the Sorcerer's Stones, the source of their magic. Only the truly desperate and foolish would ever dare stand against them.But no one ever accused Atsuko Kagari of being bright, did they?#Diweekly: Spies
Relationships: Diana Cavendish/Atsuko "Akko" Kagari
Comments: 16
Kudos: 133





	Magic For All

Akko set the clothes basket down gently, and knocked twice on Lady Cavendish’s door.

“Come in,” a soft voice trailed through the door, and Akko felt her heart jump. It was silly, she knew the Lady would be in her quarters at this hour, but her nervous heart betrayed her anyway.

“Y-yes, Milady,” Akko opened the door, carrying the basket of freshly pressed clothes into Lady Cavendish’s room. She placed it as quietly as she could next to her wardrobe, stacking the clothes in with hands that were desperately trying not to shake.

Lady Cavendish chuckled softly, “Please, it’s just the two of us. You know you can call me Diana,” she placed a gentle hand on Akko’s shoulder.

Akko tried not to stiffen at the touch, tried to maintain her concentration as Diana’s breath breezed past her ear. “Y- yes Mila- Diana,” she hung one of the lady’s blouses in the wardrobe, trying not to cringe at the crease she’d left when Diana had touched her.

“How long do we have?” Diana whispered, pressing her lips softly to the side of Akko’s neck.

“N- not long,” Akko ducked away from her touch to grab another blouse. “Anna sent me, and she knows how long the job should take,” she stood again, hanging the blouse up, “and you  _ know _ how she gets about the rota-”

Diana silenced Akko with her lips, tilting her head around to accept her kiss. Akko melted into the kiss, dropping the blouse haphazardly on the ground as Diana’s fingers threaded through her hair. Akko’s hands moved to Diana’s side, holding her with far more tenderness than she did the fancy clothes as Diana pulled her body flush with her own.

Diana pulled away, eyes locking onto Akko’s own with a hunger she was  _ very _ familiar with. “We don’t have time!” Akko whined, “Even that was probably enough for Anna to-” she was silenced as Diana pushed her back, gentle but firm, against the wall of the walk-in wardrobe. Akko stifled a groan as Diana pressed her lips against her, more insistent this time. Akko found her arguments dying on her tongue, whimpering softly as Diana’s hands slid down to her waist.

There was a heavy knock at the servants’ door.

“Kagari!” Anna’s demanding voice rang through, “are you quite done yet?”

“Yes ma’am!” Akko jumped away from Diana, “I mean, uh, just finishing up now!”

“Well when you’re ready, there’s a task that needs your attention,” Anna said.

Diana looked as if she was about to combust on the spot. “I’m afraid Miss Kagari may be some time,” she transitioned perfectly back into her aloof, aristocratic tone. “She spilled my cup of tea on her way in, and will have to deal with that mess first.”

Anna sighed, “I’ll deal with the matter then.” Diana breathed a sigh of relief. “May I come in, Lady Cavendish?” Diana cursed under her breath.

“One moment,” Diana responded. She mouthed a quick ‘sorry’ to Akko, before tipping her cup of tea on the carpet and schooling her face into her usual icy expression. “Come in.”

Anna walked in, took one look at the tea stain on the carpet and at the stack of clothes that Akko was only halfway through placing into Diana’s wardrobe. She heaved a sigh, “I’ll deal with your duties here, Kagari. You’re needed in the Duchess’s room.”

Akko’s eyes widened, “What?”

“Miss Walker has taken ill. You will need to attend to her duties this evening while the Duchess is away.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Akko replied immediately, bowing stiffly. “Anything I need to know?”

“Just clean her room, Kagari.” Anna’s face turned sympathetic for a moment, “The Duchess can be… particular, so we’ll leave anything more thorough until after Miss Walker’s recovery.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Akko saluted, enjoying the look of Diana trying to stifle a giggle. She’d rather not be leaving, of course, but she could hardly refuse when her supervisor gave her a job.

After all, she’d been waiting for this opportunity for months.

* * *

Akko cracked open the servants’ entry to Duchess Cavendish’s room. Her suite was opulent, decadent even. Akko had to fight the bile rising in her throat as she got to witness for the first time just how good her employer truly had it.

But all that was going to change tonight.

She wasted no time, pulling down the front of her maid’s shift, reaching into the wiring of her bra, and assembling the tiny collapsible wand within. It pulsed with magic as Akko shut her eyes, breathing, focusing. She could feel the heartbeat of the Sorcerer's Stone, could sense the magic flowing from it and suffusing her body. It wasn’t in this room, but that had been an outside chance anyway. She calmed herself, pushing all thoughts from her mind save for the river of magic washing over her. With a deep breath, she opened her eyes.

Nothing jumped out at her, and she sighed in frustration. Too much to hope that it would be that easy.  _ ‘Now, if I were a key to a room with a hidden Sorcerer’s Stone, where would I be…’ _ Akko thought to herself, whispering a quiet spell and waving the wand over her eyes.

Several potent magical items immediately revealed themselves to her. Most were hidden or disguised somewhere, and she noted with alarm the sheer number of nasty looking ones around the Duchess’s bed and the door. Her reputation for paranoia clearly wasn’t unearned. There was a reason this opportunity had been such a long time in the making, and she wasn’t about to waste it now.

She looked carefully around the room, and finally spotted what she was looking for. Hidden in a false cabinet, utterly undetectable to the human eye: a single tiny key. And several magical traps surrounding it.

Akko smirked, the Duchess clearly didn’t know who she was dealing with.

She adjusted the spell on her eyes, removing the glow from everything except the key. With incredible care, her wand began to weave through the air. Slowly, delicately, the green light pouring from her wand morphed into the shape of the hidden key.

Learning that spell had taken months, mastering it had taken years. But years were nothing compared to the centuries of oppression noblewitches had inflicted upon them. And Akko was about to strike a counterblow that would reverberate throughout history.

* * *

Following the key’s magical signature had been no easy task, and if Akko was spotted out at night, with a wand no less, being fired would be the least of her worries. But there she stood, before a great oaken door, inlaid with an ostentatious carving of a unicorn rising majestically in front of a mighty tree.

Akko’s breath hitched as her copied key slid into the lock. She could  _ feel _ the magical presence from the other side, sense it flowing through her.  _ This _ is what the noblewitches had hoarded for so long. Power that could have been used by thousands of witches. Power that could have helped millions,  _ billions, _ left trapped in the mansions of tyrants.

The lock clicked, and Akko was through.

Immediately, she was confronted by a wide chasm.  _ “Tia Frey!” _ she cast, stepping out onto a thin disc of air. Significantly less stable than a broom, but her bra could only hold so much.

She floated across the chasm on the disc. No fancy tricks, this was a spell she’d always struggled with, and Lotte and Sucy wouldn’t be here to bail her out this time. Thinking of her teammates spiked her excitement. Soon, she’d be free. Done with this damn mission and “Yes Duchess” and “Sorry Anna” and “Milady Dia-”

Her thoughts stilled.

She realised she would probably never see Diana again. That… hurt her more than she’d expected. When Amanda had suggested that she  _ ‘seduce Lady Cavendish’ _ as part of her infiltration, she’d laughed it off with the rest of the team. But she’d done it, and not even intentionally. If anything, Diana had seduced  _ her. _ She’d told herself that Diana was a noblewitch, an enemy, someone she was using to get to her goal. But it wasn’t that simple.

Diana was… kind. She cared for the wellbeing of others, in a way Akko had genuinely assumed was impossible for a noble. Akko still remembered vividly the night Diana lay next to her confiding her life’s dream to run a hospital that treated all of the sick and needy, not just those with the wealth or connections to pay for it. How was she meant to reconcile that with the last two decades of brutality of the Cavendish name?

Her reverie was broken as her feet returned to solid ground. She was on some kind of giant platform, floating above the lake below. An enormous tree covered the platform, growing strong despite the clear lack of soil beneath it.

Was the Sorcerer’s Stone somewhere inside the tree? Akko couldn’t see it anywhere as she paced around its edge, with the only sounds her quiet footsteps and the gently flowing water below. And… something else… 

Akko dodged to the side at the last possible second as the snake struck from the branches of the tree, nearly invisible in the dim light. She raised her wand,  _ “Metamorphie Facie-” _

The second snake struck.

Akko dropped to the ground, hissing in pain as the venom immediately seeped through her system. There was nothing she could do. Not with the first snake slithering towards her for another strike. She shut her eyes, failing to stop the tears. The mission had failed. She had failed. The first snake struck, and she knew no more.

* * *

Akko awoke.

That fact alone was surprising enough, but it was nothing against what she saw when her eyes opened.

She was underground, in a dimly lit room covered by hospital beds. She vaguely realised she was lying on one of said beds, but this fact barely registered to her compared with the fact that the ‘dim light’ was being provided by a  _ Sorcerer’s Stone. _

Akko had never actually seen one up close. She knew the feel of them, all witches did, but seeing one for real was… mesmerising.

“So that’s why,” came a sad voice from behind her.

She whipped around, wincing in pain at her recent wounds, to see Lady Diana Cavendish entering the room. She was carrying a medical bag of some sort, and Akko realised idly that there was one already connected to her arm, pumping what could only be antivenom through her blood.

“Diana…” Akko started, at a loss of what to say.

“You’re a witch, aren’t you?” Diana stated.

Akko breathed in, before nodding, “Yes, I am.”

“And you were looking for  _ this,” _ she gestured at the Sorcerer’s Stone.

“I was.”

“So is  _ that _ why you decided to defile my mother’s grave?” Diana spat.

“Defile what?” Akko sat up shakily. “I found some big tree and got attacked by snakes!”

“You  _ defiled,” _ Diana spat the word again, “the sacred succession site where all heads of the Cavendish house are chosen, and eventually returned.”

“Oh well excuse me for not knowing the secret bullshit of noblewitches,” Akko flung her arms in the air, wincing in pain and immediate regret. “I’ll make sure to tread carefully next time you try to kill me with a snake.”

“What makes you think those snakes were mine?” Diana asked incredulously.

Akko paused, feeling rather stupid. “They’re the Duchess’s, aren’t they?”

Diana nodded, “I was to succeed my Aunt as Duchess of Cavendish on the first Venusian eclipse after my eighteenth birthday. Her snakes attacked me before the succession ritual could begin, and have been there ever since.” There was a bitterness to her voice that Akko had never heard, even in her most unguarded moments. Her eyes narrowed, “But my unfortunate family history is all rather secondary to the fact that  _ you  _ have been posing as a maidservant for several months, with the intention of stealing a treasure we don’t even  _ use _ anymore.”

“Well if you don’t use it, then why  _ shouldn’t _ I steal it?” Akko demanded. “Do you have any idea how much good we could do with one of those?”

“How much good  _ you _ could do?” Diana’s voice rose. “This hospital has been used to treat the sick and wounded for centuries! Of all classes, all creeds! Friend and foe alike! The other noblefamilies would have destroyed us if they knew, yet still we persisted!”

She gestured around the room, and Akko took in for the first time the heaving shelves covered in heavy tomes.  _ “This _ is the true legacy of the House of Cavendish. A legacy I am proud to call my own. A legacy you trampled on, all so you could try and steal some trinket for your little Polaris Rebellion.”

So she knew. “And when, oh great and noble Lady Cavendish,” Akko countered, “was the last time this hospital was used to help  _ anyone?” _

“Do you really believe I’d trust my Aunt with the knowledge here?” Diana stood above Akko now, looking down at her through cold eyes. “Only the true heir of Cavendish can access this place. Daryl may have sabotaged the succession ritual, but she can’t sabotage my blood.”

Akko stood up. Diana flinched back as Akko was suddenly  _ very _ close to her personal space. “Blood this, legacy that, do you not hear yourself?” Akko waved her arms, gesturing to the shelves around them. “Look at this! Think of how many hundreds, no,  _ thousands _ of people have died that could have been saved by something in this room!”

“I think about that  _ every day, _ Akko,” tears suddenly stained Diana’s cheeks. “Every day. And I will curse my Aunt to her grave for it.  _ When _ I am finally able to complete the succession ritual, I will be sure to make up for lost time. On that, you have my word.”

“And how long will that be?” Akko demanded, pushing forward again, feeling the tube in her arm pulling taught. “Years? Decades? Meanwhile, people are dying out there in the real world. Dying, Diana. Not coming back.”

“You think I don’t know what death is?” Diana stood her ground, inches in front of Akko’s face, fury in her eyes.

“I know you do,” Akko said sadly, “and I am honestly really sorry your mother died, cancer’s a bitch. My dad,” Akko’s voice broke, “we couldn’t treat his flu. Then it became pneumonia. Then…”

Diana’s eyes widened. She had nothing to say to that.

“That’s why I’m here,” Akko’s eyes shone with determination, “so no other poor kid has to watch a parent die to something that a noble could have had cured in seconds.”

“Do you even know any healing spells?” Diana asked.

“A couple. We’ll figure out the rest, once we have that Stone,” Akko wasn’t backing down.

Diana sighed. “Tell me, Akko,” her voice came out quietly, despite the mere inches separating them, “was it ever real?”

Akko froze. A thousand stolen glances flitted through her head at once. A hundred stolen kisses, a dozen stolen nights. She thought of the disdain Diana had held her with at first, how it had softened, changed, until she got to see the true shape of the person that lay beneath. She looked into Diana’s eyes, remembering the three months they’d spent together.

“OF COURSE IT WASN’T!” Akko shouted in her face. Diana fell back as if she’d been slapped. “How could it have been real? You thought I was your  _ servant!” _ Akko spat. “You could have had me fired, hell, had me  _ killed, _ at a moment’s notice!”

“I would nev-” Diana started.

“I know, but that doesn’t matter!” Akko’s face was red now, tears streaking down her cheeks. “What matters is that you  _ could have. _ How can there be anything  _ real _ there? This isn’t a shitty romance novel, there’s no happily ever after at the end of that story. What, were you gonna whisk me away and marry me as soon as you became head of house?”

“I had certainly… entertained the fantasy,” Diana’s voice came out weakly.

“Fantasy, exactly!” Akko hauled Diana to her feet. “You want something  _ real? _ Something that  _ matters?” _ She pointed her finger to the Sorcerer’s Stone, “Take it.”

“What!?” Diana couldn’t believe what she was being asked.

“Take the Stone, with me,” Akko’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Bring the medical stuff too. You could live your dream, with us.”

“I…” Diana stood in silence, as if her usually quick mind had come screeching to a halt.

“Most of what we do is helping people,” Akko hoped desperately she didn’t sound like she was pleading. “You could do so much good. I’ve seen your heart, I know you care about making the world better. I do want to be able to help you do that.”

Diana took a shaky step towards the Stone, Akko’s eyes widened in shock.

Diana took another step, then another. Within seconds she was standing, touching the Sorcerer’s Stone with one hand. “This Stone was gifted to Beatrice, of the Nine, over a thousand years ago,” she whispered. “This Stone has been used by my family to help those in need since a time before the oldest trees.”

“And it can do that again,” Akko reassured her, placing her hand on Diana’s own. “I believe in you, Diana.”

Diana lifted the Stone.

Akko’s lips crashed into hers.

It was frantic, messy. There was an unstoppable energy sparking between them, intertwining with the magic flowing from the Stone. Akko’s arms wrapped around Diana, pulling her deeper into the kiss. Diana kissed back with an unrestrained passion Akko had never felt from her, even in their most snatched moments.

After an eternity, Akko broke the kiss, looking into Diana’s eyes with storm-like intensity. “That real enough for you?”

Diana nodded, breathless. “Grab everything off that shelf,” she pointed behind Akko, “I’ll get the rest. The quicker we’re out the better.”

Half an hour later, they were in the sky above Cavendish Manor, a trove of medical texts and the Sorcerer’s Stone strapped to Diana’s broom.

“Well, Lady Cavendish,” Akko whispered from behind her. “Welcome to your new life.”

“I already told you,” Diana twisted her head to peck Akko’s lips, “call me Diana.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all enjoyed! This was a blast to be a part of, and I can't wait to see how everyone else responded. Looking forward to the next prompt!
> 
> Comments / feedback always appreciated!


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